November 15, 2017

I've been slowly working on this travel scrapbook journal ever since we got back from our trip to Europe last November. I actually started making the book on the trip and packed a little kit of papers and essentials to take with me that fitted snugly in my luggage.

The pages of this book are mostly made using envelopes, with a few different items such as cards and paper bags, thrown in for good measure. The beauty of the construction of this type of book is that the pages don't have to be identical in size and/or shape, so you can really add whatever you like to it. It also lays nice and flat despite having quite a lot of stuff on the pages and in the pockets, because of the way it's made.

If you're like me, you're a bit of a bower bird and, especially when I'm travelling, I seem to accumulate a collection of bits and bobs along the way. (aka. precious treasures, that I simply MUST keep!) The bonus in making this type of book is that all those little treasures can be stored together WITH the photos so you can see everything at once.

This way this book is constructed is one of my favourite go to techniques and probably the easiest to make. I put together a You Tube video (below) to share with you, which walks you through the internal pages of this unfinished book. The video goes for about 10 minutes and you'll have to excuse my croaky voice, my rambling thought patterns and scary old lady hands, but I hope it may inspire you to create a book of your own.

Stay tuned for a more detailed "how to" construct this type of book in the next week or so. I'm also planning to share with you how the cover was made, and eventually I'm hoping to be able to show you a finished album! yay!

August 07, 2012

I recently purchased a book - Crochet Workshop by Erica Knight - it took a few weeks to arrive but it was well worth the wait as it's so fantastic! I highly recommend this book for anyone like me, who is keen to learn crochet, but would like to see it applied in a more modern and artistic way. One of the techniques I'm really looking forward to trying for myself is using thin strips of fabric as thread. The results look awesome!

Since I started crochet, I've been limited in what projects I could tackle because I just don't know how to do some things yet. I've also been pretty much making it up as I went along, but last night I discovered the correct way to half treble crochet, which turned out to be quite different to the way I have been doing it so far. haha.

I've started working through the stitch library in the book and am putting together my own stitch sampler for future reference (pictured above).